CONCEPT
The Smooth as Hyperobject
The total condition of algorithmic frictionlessness — not located in any device but distributed across every mediated interaction — analyzed as a hyperobject.
The simulation extends Byung-Chul Han's diagnosis of the aesthetics of the smooth through Morton's hyperobject framework. The smooth is not merely a design preference or cultural pathology — it is a hyperobject, massively distributed across every algorithmic surface, viscous (once minds are shaped by frictionless interaction, expectations adhere), nonlocal (there is no place where the smooth 'is'), temporally undulant (its cognitive effects accumulate on timescales exceeding perception), phasing (appearing during moments of flatness, disappearing when flow returns), and interobjective (constituted by relationships between platforms, users, norms, and institutions).
In The You On AI Field Guide
Han identified smoothness as the dominant aesthetic of contemporary culture — Jeff Koons's mirror-polished sculptures, the iPhone's featureless glass, Botox, one-click purchasing. Each eliminates resistance. Each conceals construction. Edo Segal documented the smooth's cost in You On AI — thinned attention, atrophied questioning, eroded embodied understanding. But both Han and Segal frame the smooth as something observable from outside, a condition the disciplined critic or builder can perceive and